$layer Cash Grab: “Raining Blood” is Featured in the new Google Chromebook Commercial
Brian Posehn once famously joked that if you’re blowing your male friend, it’s not gay at all if you yell “SLAYERRRR!!!” Apparently the inverse is true, too: Slayer can pretty much get away with murder without fear of being labeled anything other than “metal.” In this case it’s the dreaded “sellout” label: Slayer will attached their name to seemingly anything for a quick buck — Pinball iPhone apps, socks, condoms, and even yarmulkes — but it doesn’t matter; Slayer are just so damned metal that they’re immune to being called out on their blatant cash grabs.
The latest: “Raining Blood” is featured prominently in a TV commercial for the new Google Chromebook computer. This is hardly what the band had in mind when they released the song in 1986, and I’m quite sure that if the ’80s versions of Kerry King and Tom Araya could take a time machine 25 years into the future to see this commercial they’d puke on the spot and then proceed to commit seppuku.
Not that I’m blaming them for taking a paycheck — they certainly deserve it, and bands should take money any way they can get it in these tough times — but I’m just saying we should call a spade a spade. When Kiss shills out their name for the latest corporate product we cry foul and ruthlessly make fun of Gene $immons, but when Slayer does it we’re all “oh look this is cool! SLAYERRRR! yeahh!!!”
I call BS: if Ki$$ are sellouts, so are Slayer. As if the fact that they write the same album over and over and over and over again without any regard for artistic growth didn’t already clue you in.
